Home > Ayatollah Calls for Rally to End Fighting in Najaf
By DEXTER FILKINS and ALEX BERENSON
NAJAF, Iraq - Iraq’s most powerful Shiite cleric returned to the country on Wednesday from a hospital stay in London, calling for a mass demonstration here to end three weeks of fighting, and hours later American forces made their way almost to the gate of the Shrine of Imam Ali, where Shiite insurgents had established a base.
Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who commands the loyalty of millions of Shiite Muslims, came across the border in a convoy from Kuwait and left early Thursday morning from the southern city of Basra for Najaf, his home, at the head of a march to the shrine where American soldiers and marines have been squeezing out the militia of the rebel cleric Moktada al-Sadr.
Ayatollah Sistani urged his followers, who began flocking toward Najaf from around the country late Wednesday, not to enter the city’s gates until he arrives there, probably on Thursday afternoon.
As the United States Army barraged the Old City in the early hours of Thursday, the Marines advanced from the west by tank and on foot, and fires burned.
"Don’t shoot the mosque,’’ said Maj. Doug Ollivant, operations officer of the First Battalion of the Army’s Fifth Cavalry.
"Roger, we won’t shoot the mosque,’’ replied Capt. Kevin Badger, commander of Company A, which was leading the assault.
The Americans met limited resistance. Indeed, the Americans, who entered Najaf’s Old City on Tuesday, seemed to have nearly total control of the main roads leading into the shrine, where there was hardly a habitable building left standing.
The announcement by the 73-year-old grand ayatollah, at a critical moment in the battle, set the stage for a dramatic show of his authority in the ravaged city. Adherents in the nearby holy city of Karbala massed to join the march.
With Mr. Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia suffering from the bombardment, the announcement by Ayatollah Sistani suggested that he was seizing an opportune moment, gambling that his return could disperse what appeared to be an increasingly confused and demoralized group of insurgents and signal to Iraq’s majority Shiites that he could save the shrine from damage or destruction.
Both the interim Iraqi government and the American commanders, whose troops have been advancing steadily on the shrine but at great political cost, welcomed the announcement, seeing in it a possible way out of the bloodshed and the political predicament.
The ayatollah’s announcement came as American jets and helicopters pounded the area around the Ali Mosque, with some bombs exploding as close as 30 yards from the shrine. On Wednesday, American bombs and rockets rained down, both from the F-16 jets and from the Apache helicopters over the Old City.
The Mahdi Army fighters here seemed to be on the brink of disintegration, with widespread talk that many fighters were fleeing the Old City. Only a few hundred diehards fell back into the area immediately surrounding the shrine and into the shrine itself. Throughout the sweltering afternoon Wednesday, Mahdi fighters carried their ravaged and bleeding comrades down the narrow alleyways that lead to the shrine.
With Mr. Sadr nowhere in sight, the Iraqi police on Wednesday arrested one of this chief aides, Ali Smeisim, an act that until recently seemed beyond their reach. Only on Wednesday, Mr. Smeisim strode into a hotel well behind American lines and denounced the Iraqi government, accusing it of spurning Mr. Sadr’s efforts to make peace.
After Mr. Smeisim’s arrest, a group calling itself the Brigade of Divine Fury kidnapped the brother-in-law of the Iraqi defense minister, Hazim al-Shalaan. The group demanded Mr. Smeisim’s release.
It was the arrest of another Sadr aide that led to the seizure of the shrine by the Mahdi Army on Aug. 5. Ayatollah Sistani, whose house is less than 100 yards away, left Iraq for London the next day, and was reported to have undergone an angioplasty to clear a blocked artery on Aug. 13.
"His eminence plans to enter the city," said Hamed al-Khaffaf, a Sistani aide. "He calls on everyone who wishes to join him to do so, in an effort to end the siege of Najaf."
As word began to spread of Ayatollah Sistani’s plans, Shiites from much of Iraq prepared to come to Najaf. In Karbala, thousands gathered at the Shrine of Hussein.
The interim Iraqi prime minister, Ayad Allawi, for whom the uprising at Najaf has emerged as a crucial test of his ability to govern, issued a statement welcoming Ayatollah Sistani back to the country.
Since the fighting began three weeks ago, Dr. Allawi has wavered between bellicose threats and offers to negotiate. In that way, his dilemma mirrored that of the Americans when the rebels seized the shrine: how to expel Mr. Sadr and his fighters without damaging or destroying one of the holiest sites in Shiite Islam, and without adding to his popularity in Iraq’s teeming Shiite slums.
American military commanders, who have also been searching for a way to end the siege here, appeared to welcome the ayatollah’s announcement as well. In a statement, one of the chief military spokesmen indicated that the Americans would, in this case, take their orders from Dr. Allawi’s government. That seemed to raise the possibility that the Americans could halt their military operations and give Ayatollah Sistani a chance to end the fighting.
Still, with events moving quickly, it was unclear late Wednesday if any such order to halt the offensive had been given. Explosions rocked the city late into the evening. Two Iraqis were killed in clashes in neighboring Kufa, when a large group of Iraqis, apparently supporters of Mr. Sadr, tried to march to the shrine.
"We are following their lead," Adm. Greg Slavonic, an American spokesman, said of the Iraqi government.
The unanswered question was whether Mr. Sadr’s forces would leave or fight. The answer may shape the delicate balance of power in Iraq’s majority Shiite population, which could set the political direction of the whole country.
In the months since the fall of Saddam Hussein, Ayatollah Sistani has charted a moderate course between the Americans and Mr. Sadr, a young cleric who rose to prominence outside the mainstream Shiite religious establishment that the ayatollah upholds. People close to the ayatollah have said he loathes Mr. Sadr and is concerned about his growing power among Iraq’s dispossessed.
Consequently, associates of the ayatollah say, he has not publicly objected to the American assault on Mr. Sadr’s forces, even at risk of damaging the shrine.
With his return, he may have decided that the Americans have gone far enough, or done too much damage to the city already. But it may also be that Ayatollah Sistani sees Mr. Sadr’s force as sufficiently weakened that he can safely challenge him, now that the American forces have killed or wounded many of the militiamen.
There were indications on Wednesday that Mr. Sadr’s men, if not the man himself, might be prepared to give way. For all of Mr. Sadr’s street credibility, he does not approach the ayatollah’s stature among most Iraqis. He has indicated that he would follow the senior cleric’s direction.
"He is like our father," Walid Shakhir, a Mahdi Army fighter said of the ayatollah. "He will meet with Moktada’s representative. Moktada respects Ayatollah Sistani very much, and he would do what he says."
Mr. Shakhir, standing barefoot with a sniper rifle outside the Imam Ali Shrine, seemed emblematic of the confusion that has gripped the Mahdi Army. Only days ago, the fighters seemed numerous and ascendant, but on Wednesday their ranks were thin and their leader absent.
Throughout the day, there seemed little that the Americans could not do: when a cluster of Mahdi Army fighters fired from a building, even at the foot of the Imam Ali Shrine, an American bomb destroyed it. When the militiamen constructed a barricade to protect them as they crossed into the shrine, the Americans blasted that, too.
"No pictures, no pictures!" a militiamen shouted, carrying his blood-soaked comrade down an alley.
The wounded man grimaced, and his comrade said to him, "You are hero." Then he raced across the street, carrying his friend into the shrine.
Grim rumors began to circulate, most of them suggesting that the end was near. One rumor had it that the militiamen, especially those who had come to fight from outside Najaf, were selling their weapons cheap and skirting out of town.
"I want you to tell me the truth," said Hadir Syed, tugging an ice cart outside the Old City. "There is a rumor that the Mahdi Army gave up."
As a reporter continued toward the shrine, the man yelled out a warning.
"God willing," he said, "we will have Ayad Allawi’s head."
For all the signs of the Mahdi Army’s strain, there seemed to be a will to fight on. Over the rattle of machine gun fire, a voice came over the shrine’s loudspeaker, urging the young men on.
"God is with you - you are heroes!" intoned the voice, its sounds echoing down the alleys. "God is with you, Mahdi Army.
"Fight, fight, fight!"